


and it makes her but it breaks her

by prefacing



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Marco/Annie if you squint, but really I just like making myself sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-15
Updated: 2014-04-15
Packaged: 2018-01-19 11:08:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1467277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prefacing/pseuds/prefacing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of vignettes following Marco and Annie, culminating with the two of them swapping gear when Annie's malfunctions during Trost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and it makes her but it breaks her

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this prompt](http://snkkink.dreamwidth.org/2848.html?thread=3664928#cmt3664928) on the SnK kink meme. Also I can't write Annie to save my life.

Annie meets Marco for the first time when he trips over a crack in the floorboards and sends thin suppertime gruel flying all over her pristine white hoody in the middle of the mess hall.

She has to physically shove her palm into his face to stop the babbled stream of apologies rushing forth from his mouth, still ongoing after an entire sixty seconds. _It’s fine_ she comments, to which he replies _No it isn’t, I’m so sorry Annie, I’ll make it up to you somehow_.

Two weeks later, she finds a hoody, a near duplicate of her own, neatly folded and placed at the foot of her bunk. In the middle of nowhere as they are, with the nearest town half a day's journey away, obtaining anything beyond standard-issue military gear would have been beyond difficult. The very edges of her lips curl up as she lifts it up and presses her nose into the soft fabric.

\--------

Over the course of their first year of training, Annie finds that Marco is the least irritating of the new recruits outside of Bertholt. He doesn't posture like Jean, doesn't make a regular fool of himself like Eren, and appears to have more of a brain than both Sasha and Connie combined (though she speculates that the latter is something that holds true for the majority of the recruits in her particular class).

All the recruits learn quickly to circle around her in wide berths, afraid to get too close to the girl with the scary eyes.

The behavior suits her just fine. Maintaining distance means the secret she holds close to her heart has less chance of discovery, means she has fewer things to tie her down when everything finally goes to shit and she has to drop this carefully crafted disguise.

But Marco, for some odd reason, remains undeterred. Despite her glowers and cold stares, he treats her exactly the same as he does everyone else, smiling brightly in her direction whenever he catches her eye and calling out a greeting, even when her shoulders are pulled inward and her stride is brisk enough to leave everyone else behind.

When she finally does return his hello with one of her own, the delighted smile on his face dislodges a small part of her she thought she'd buried a long time ago.

\--------

Despite the size of their class, she finds herself paired with him during chores duty more often than she expects. He spends the entire time talking, filling what could have been an awkward silence with stories of his day and how Sasha almost broke Jean's nose after he'd tried to pilfer one of her rolls during lunch. The cadence of his voice is soothing, and she finds herself interested in his anecdotes despite herself.

She never offers insight into her day; he never pushes, and she appreciates him all the more for it.

As the months pass, his anecdotes become more personal, turning towards his family and the life he lead in Jinae before signing up with the military. He tells her about his siblings – or rather sibling, singular, one sister younger than him by four years – and the decisions leading up to his current place here. How his mother had cried and how his sister had clung to his leg the day of his departure and refused to let go. His voice is soft as he speaks of them and his eyes stare down into dirty dishwater, and she realizes how much trust he's placing in her by sharing with her this memory.

It's a delicate thing, as fragile as a human life placed in a titan's palm, and she tucks it away carefully, encasing it in a film of crystal as so to preserve it.

_Your mother would be proud of you._

She turns back to her dishes and pretends she doesn't hear the muffled sniffle to her right.

\--------

She comes across Marco wiping away tears with the heels of his hands a few nights before the eve of their graduation, and it's enough to stop her in her tracks. When he notices his face flushes red and he laughs softly, brushing off the tears as nothing to worry about, but there's a tension to his shoulders she doesn't remember seeing before.

It hits her then that not once in the three years she's known him has he ever asked to unload his feelings onto someone else. Selfless Marco, always willing to take on the burdens of others but oh so reluctant to share his own troubles. Such a human trait, but in that moment she envies him for it. 

_Do you want to talk about it?_

He blinks at her for a second, mouth slightly agape before it curls into a small but genuine smile. She's not surprised when he shakes his head and makes to leave, but pauses when he calls out to her again.

 _Annie!_ She turns, raises an eyebrow. He laughs, more genuine this time, and continues. _I just wanted to say thank you, for listening. You always listen to me even when you don't have to and it—it means a lot to me._

She doesn't reply until after he leaves, wishing her a good night, and when they come the words are barely a whisper.

_Any time._

\--------

Trost is an unmitigated fuckup, and it begins and ends with the breakdown of her 3DMG.

Both her wires snap in midair, sending her plummeting to the ground, and it's only through sheer reflex that she manages to hit the ground shoulder-first in a roll.

Fuck, she thinks, and pushes herself off of the ground. 

Before she can assess her situation – hopeless, as far as she's aware – Marco appears out of nowhere, alighting on the ground, hands at his hips and unbuckling his gear even as he runs towards her. Her eyes widen imperceptibly – the equivalent of bulging eyes on anyone else – as he shoves his now detached gear into her arms. _You need this more than I do_ he says, and when she opens her mouth to protest he cuts her off with a shake of his head. _You're more valuable out there than I am, Annie._

Her body stays frozen in place, even as screams fill the air and bricks go scattering to the ground not a hundred feet from them, only jerking slowly back into motion when Marco grabs one of her hands, brown eyes dark and unreadable and more serious than she ever remembers seeing them. He opens his mouth as if to say something, then thinks better of it and smiles wanly at her.

_Be careful, okay?_

Three words and then he's off, running in the direction opposite her. She takes a precious second to watch his retreating figure before she sets to work replacing her faulty gear with his, polished wood and metal that's clearly well-maintained and well-loved.

The gear isn't the only thing on the streets that's well-loved by him.

\--------

She doesn’t cry when she finds him three days later, face down in the dusty streets of Trost and missing half his upper body.

Early morning sun grazes against the nape of her neck, bared by the twist of hair upwards, but her body is frozen and cold, the only movement the slow clench and unclench of the fists held at her sides. It doesn't surprise her to see him there, but the sudden pain low in her chest is surprising. The eerie silence of morning is quickly drowned out by the low buzz of flies above Marco's desecrated corpse.

Reaching out one hand to whisk them away, Annie sets about moving his body. It seems wrong to leave him there, just another body in a sea of maimed broken corpses. He deserves better than that, after all he's done.

The work takes effort given their difference in size but she's determined and he's dead, and it's not long before he's propped up against a wall, looking almost like a sleeping doll except that half his face is shorn off.

Mostly, she remembers the goodness in his eyes and his genuineness and thinks, he would have been good for the Military Police.

Bending down, she takes hold of his remaining hand, so much colder than it had been three days prior, and curls his fingers into a gentle fist before placing it against his chest, a silent salute to the ideals he'd stood for. Died for. 

She told him once before how stupid she'd thought his goal was, to enter service with a faction deeply set in its unclean corrupt ways. _They won't change, no matter what any of us do. Why even bother?_ He'd just smiled at her, no trace of offense anywhere on his face, and shrugged. _Because it's the right thing to do. Because people can accomplish a lot if they just put their minds to it._

And then he'd looked at her, with that knowing gaze of his. _I bet you could accomplish whatever you wanted, Annie. You're a lot stronger than you think you are._

She studies him a moment longer, years-old words echoing in her head, before spinning on her heel and walking away as the first of that day's clean-up crew slowly start filling the streets.

\--------

When Annie swears herself to the King's service a week later, she doesn't think of safety or freedom but of a boy, with earnest brown eyes and a smile wise beyond his years.


End file.
